Jane Eyre (2011)

Compelling and powerful adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel, directed by Cary Fukunaga. 

Mia Wasikowska stars in the title role, while Rochester is played by Michael Fassbender. Both of them are absolutely at the top of their game, delivering subtle and nuanced performances. 

There’s something highly believable about it – a gritty realism that’s often lost when revered classics are filmed.

J. Edgar (2011)

Directed by Clint Eastwood, this is a surprisingly dull biopic given the rich source material. 

J. Edgar Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio) looks back on his life and work as the head of the FBI. Along the way we learn about his repressed homosexuality and a series of world events as presidents come and go. 

Naomi Watts is wasted as a secretary with little to go on in terms of a fleshed-out character. Judi Dench is much better as Edgar’s domineering mother. Much of the story is told in flashback and the worst aspect is the prosthetics used to age the character. DiCaprio and Watts look OK, but Armie Hammer as Clyde Tolson looks comically awful in his rubbery “older” face, and it’s a major distraction. 

In a very brief appearance only, Adam Driver makes his film debut.

Iris (2001)

A biopic of Iris Murdoch, a love story and a study of the great writer’s decline into Alzheimer’s, this is a gripping and sad drama.

Adapted from John Bayley’s book about his dying wife, Iris: A Memoir of Iris Murdoch (1998), it cleverly flits between young Iris (Kate Winslet) and old Iris (Judi Dench) in order to show you the strength of talent and personality being eroded by the disease. The two eras dovetail perfectly, often connected by visual signifiers (such as the couple swimming “then” and “now”) that make them flow together seamlessly.

Jim Broadbent plays Bayley as a bumbling figure who remains deeply in love with the brilliant, unconventional woman he met in Oxford. My only criticism of the film is that this almost comically awkward characterisation gives little sense that he also had a remarkable intellect of his own.

Winslet and Dench are both highly convincing as the celebrated writer – painfully so in the case of the latter. It’s almost unbearable to watch her “sailing into darkness”, as she puts it, as she slowly but steadily forgets everything she ever knew and even who she is.

I also found it deeply uncomfortable to see the appalling mess in the couple’s home. They were truly living in squalor with no outside support.

Penelope Wilton (of Ever Decreasing Circles fame) is excellent as Iris’s friend Janet Stone.

Skyfall (2012)

The third Daniel Craig Bond film is not only his best, but also the best Bond film overall. Directed by Sam Mendes, it’s pretty much perfect. The witty and dry dialogue is so much stronger than in previous episodes. And it’s visually stunning. The opening sequence (before the mind-bending titles over the Adele song) is a stunning piece of extended action in Istanbul involving a car chase through a crowded market, a shoot-out, a motorbike chase over rooftops, an absurd episode involving an excavator, a fight on the roof of a moving train, and, most dramatically, Bond being shot “dead”.

I’ve heard fans say that this film humanises Bond too much, with his family backstory and the “psychological” dimension, but for me that only makes it better. There’s even the first hint of homoeroticism in a Bond film. The villain teases him, only for 007 to counter “What makes you think this is my first time?”

It’s ideally cast, introducing the new Q (Ben Whishaw) and Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) plus the new Chairman of Intelligence (Ralph Fiennes) and an impressively nasty villain called Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem). Rory Kinnear resumes his role as Bill Tanner, getting the part just right. And Judi Dench is wonderful as M. When she starts reading a poem by Tennyson as Bond runs through the London streets to save her (the film is also a British tourism brochure), it’s deeply stirring stuff.

Chocolat (2000)

Romantic comedy-drama. Restless spirit Juliette Binoche and her young daughter arrive in a small and small-minded French town in 1959. She opens a chocolate shop and slowly begins to transform the lives of the locals with the exotic, seductive treats she prepares. The ever-reliable Judi Dench is her cranky old landlady, who suffers from diabetes and family discord. Johnny Depp is a river gypsy, fellow outsider and, inevitably, becomes her love interest. Alfred Molina plays Comte de Reynaud, the repressive mayor who regards everything Binoche does as a threat to his control of the town. Best of all is Lena Olin as the abused wife and pretty thief Josephine, who becomes her friend.

The film is slow to get going and I was close to giving up with it in the first 20 minutes. It eventually draws you in, despite being far from “my kind of thing”. There’s some silly semi-mystical fluff about the north wind, and at times it’s all a bit too polite and simplistic. Binoche uses chocolate like a benevolent drug dealer – part sorcerer, part Nigella Lawson. Plus, it wasn’t very imaginatively shot. There are weighty themes (prejudice vs. tolerance, imprisonment vs. freedom, religious oppression vs. true enlightenment) that might make you think a bit – but only a bit. Binoche is charming and easy to like, ultimately eroding any lingering cynicism.

The World Is Not Enough (1999)

The third Pierce Brosnan James Bond film.

The pros:
• A better script than Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
• A vulnerable villain (Robert Carlyle)
• M (Judi Dench) is given more of a part in the story
• Reasonably good theme song (by Garbage)

The cons:
• John Cleese is deeply unfunny as the successor to Q: not the right feel for the film at all
• The scene in which the baddie holds burning coal makes no sense. Even if he could feel no pain, as suggested, it would still have burned his flesh and destroyed his hand.
• The villain was dying anyway: so what was his real motivation? Love for Elektra?

GoldenEye (1995)

The first of four Pierce Brosnan James Bond films is an interesting attempt to introduce some knowing irony to 007 being a sexist anachronism, without taking the more radical step of the reboot that would come with the Daniel Craig era. All the usual tropes are there. We played “Bond iSpy” and ticked off each of the familiar elements. But it’s not a terrible film, despite the absolutely awful Russian IT boffin. There’s a bit more dialogue, so Brosnan gets to really act. The tank chase and exploding pen were enjoyable, as was the jumping-off-a-dam sequence. The ludicrous plot elements are present and correct, and reach a remarkable new peak when Bond dives off a cliff after a plane, “flies” into it, climbs into the cabin and then – at the very last moment – averts a crash.

Die Another Day (2002)

The fourth and final James Bond film starring Pierce Brosnan showed that the series was desperately in need of a rethink (which it would soon have with Daniel Craig). The sci-fi-tinged plot (an invisible car, a space laser like the Death Star in Star Wars) is possibly even more ludicrous than usual. There’s a bit where he’s wandering around in pyjamas and a Jesus beard after 14 months of being tortured. Halle Berry is blandly uninteresting as the female lead. John Cleese is an unfunny disaster as “Q”. There’s some awful dialogue (“Die, bitch!”). Madonna has a pointless cameo to demonstrate that she can’t act. There are cheesy slow-motion shots. And there’s a truly surreal moment when the soundtrack includes “London Calling” by The Clash. The sole redeeming feature is Judi Dench as “M”.

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

Bond film #18 and Brosnan film #2. The tech-lord villain attempting to start World War III is ridiculous. The wisecracks are daft and unfunny. Q’s brief cameo is totally bolted on. The “funky” music and slow-motion shots are naff. Regular machine-gun spraying never hits Bond. The female lead has a ludicrous secret base hidden in her flat. And Pierce Brosnan acts with his hair. But somehow it’s highly enjoyable. The extended handcuffed-on-motorbike chase scene was a lot of fun. Judi Dench is superb as M.

Quantum of Solace (2008)

Not a promising title, and it’s never really explained either.

Daniel Craig is excellent again (this was his second of five Bond films), but the girl Camille Montes (Olga Kurylenko) and the villain Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric) are weaker than usual. The former gets shoddy lines and a simplistic “revenge” motivation. The latter isn’t particularly scary or “evil”, just difficult to feel strongly about.

The plot isn’t easy to follow on first viewing, although it works better second time around. It’s extremely violent – sometimes more so than the story demands. Ludicrously, there’s an MI6 agent called Strawberry Fields (played by Gemma Arterton). She comes to a sticky end in a scene that seems to acknowledge the fate of Shirley Eaton’s character Jill Masterson in Goldfinger. The climax is a little underwhelming – perhaps because the stakes aren’t very high. Whereas Bond is usually saving the world from imminent destruction, this time he’s merely battling a nasty crook selling water back to the Bolivian government after creating an artificial drought.

Judi Dench is reliably watchable as M and raises the quality of the film whenever she appears. Her scenes are much needed as there’s sometimes a tendency for it to dip into trashier territory than Casino Royale (2006) or Skyfall (2012).

The title theme by Jack White and Alicia Keys has an appealingly fuzzy riff, but as a song it’s a total mess.

All in all, the least effective of the Daniel Craigs but still well worth a watch or two.

Casino Royale (2006)

Daniel Craig’s first James Bond film can be found on DVD in every charity shop in the land. The opening section – designed as a flashback to set up the reboot – doesn’t really work and didn’t need to be there, and the use of black and white seemed clichéd. Fortunately, the film improves enormously after that.

The action sequences are stunning – fighting on cranes and leaping between them, an airport showdown and a collapsing building in Venice. There’s real drama in the multi-million-pound poker game and when Bond is poisoned and almost dies in his car.

Judi Dench is great as M. At one point she quips “In the old days, if an agent did something that embarrassing, he'd have the good sense to defect. Christ, I miss the Cold War.”

I really liked the unexpected love story: Bond actually falls for Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) and displays an emotional depth that would have been impossible in the Roger Moore era. On first viewing I thought it was a shame that after developing the asthmatic, blood-weeping Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) as a convincingly creepy baddie, the real villain turned out to be the characterless Mr. White. Or so you are led to believe until the subsequent films peel back further layers of intrigue. On second viewing, and with knowledge of where the series was heading, I enjoyed this ending much more.